I don't know of any evidence the OCD is more common in modern cultures.
For me it took evaluating about 100 patients with the syndrome before I felt I had a feel for it. It is one of the few disorders that I think will eventually be traced to specific brain abnormalities. I base this opinion on the ability of certain antipsychotics to induce the syndrome and ongoing neuroscience research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.24972
Are there good studies comparing the prevalence of mental illness in modern times to past times? If so, please send them over...it seems like a hard thing to study, but I'd trust your recommendation if you think some good work has been done on it.
I'll have a look at the article you linked. Thanks for sending that over and sharing your thoughts.
Very thought-provoking, but I’m not entirely convinced! What is your perspective on aggressive compulsive thoughts?
I find it difficult to draw the same connection as with the “symmetry-loving subtype”, which you suggest is linked to dissatisfaction arising from the possibility of satisfaction in modern environments. Aggressive compulsive thoughts, on the other hand, seem more closely tied to cultural phenomena such as morality, rules, and rituals, which have been part of human history for much longer. This suggests to me that they might require a different explanatory framework.
I agree with Randolph Nesse that OCD is probably closer linked to disordered brain processes—for instance, evidence points to abnormalities in the functioning of the basal ganglia, which are responsible for motor control, habit formation, and emotional regulation, among others—than other mental disorders.
As a side note, there might not have been knowledge of germs in earlier times, but there was certainly an awareness of parasites, intoxication, and infection through touching or eating certain things. This makes the phenomenon seem slightly less like a mismatch to our evolutionary context.
I agree with you that aggressive compulsive thoughts might require a different explanatory framework and that evolutionary mismatch probably explains them little or not at all.
As for disordered brain processes, I take your point, and agree that it's a likely cause, although even that wouldn't necessarily rule evolutionary mismatch out, given that the brain's development depends on the environment, and surely develops differently in modern contexts than ancestral ones. But it's quite possible, of course, that evolutionary mismatch has nothing to do with this at all - that these specific brain abnormalities occur for other reasons.
Btw, if you have any sources on our knowledge of parasites, etc in earlier times, please send it over. I'd be curious to have a look. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.
My relationship with garden hedges and the trimming of in the built environment - I frequently pass 'neatly' trimmed vegetative boundaries which have obviously been executed with deliberate straight lines, but often these straight lines aren't fekin 'level'. They don't tally with the architectural structures that they are juxtaposed with and consequentially a voice in my head screams, Why ? I find such hedges visually offensive and pretty confusing, which manifests in a mild state of physical imbalance. If I allow my frustrations brew, I find myself wanting to confront the perpetrator so that I can school them in my hedge trimming doctrine and cleanse them of what I perceive as being a crime against the urbanscape . Personally, I've frequently used the aid of a large spirit level when trimming a hedge and as completion of the task nears I 'eye through' the lines of my craft against the surrounding structures from different hights and distances until I'm content :) But, interestingly with regards to my perception of the appearance of the 'natural environment' (not interfered with by man) I don't find these in anyway to be difficult to understand or accept, indeed I embrace them as they make me feel calm and centered.
I love the opening quote of that article and certainly think there's something to be said about diet's effect on mental health, but I'm not convinced by many of the studies listed in the article, nor do I think diet necessarily deserves such a central place in the evolutionary mismatch picture. Could be important, sure, but I'd want to see better research on the question. Perhaps I'll have a look at one of the books you mentioned. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Always good to keep an open mind -- otherwise a person is no better than a closet-trained AI server. I think Georgia Ede's book is the best to date, although it gets a bit too touchy-feely for my general taste.
Absolutely fascinating. And I'd say tentatively, not implausible interpretation for some OCD at least.
Anxiety (hypervigilance etc -- something we sadly evolved to have a tendency towards) has a way of latching onto THINGS THAT ARE HANDY. Satisfaction holes (I've never heard of this before but what a fabulous concept) are perfect because they are always available. You can't fix or reason (looking at you, CBT) your way out of them.
As an aside: I don't have OCD as such but my ptsd-adjacent crazy manifests at times with intrusive thoughts of atrocities and similar (historical typically, like black death, famines, genocides): I can do absolutely nothing about them. Perfect to latch on.
But also. If we accept that principle, then the standard advice of not trying to fix OCD by buying into symptoms (eg not checking heaters and irons) is not quite right. Because some things genuinely provide a fix. And yes, symptoms substitution is a thing so maybe something else will turn up. But still. There was this anecdotal story of a woman obsessing about not switching off her hairdryer. And what solved it fir her was advice to BRING IT WITH HER in the car as she leaves. Whether she started to obsess about something else, the story doesn't tell.
Yep, you nail my main gripe with CBT, its insistence on reasoning/logic. There is often a logic to these things but not in the way that CBT means.
I also take your point that although bringing the hair dryer in the car doesn't solve the underlying problem, it does provide a fix to a common occurrence of the problem, and a lot of times, removing enough common occurrences makes the underlying problem tolerable. This does go against the standard clinical advice, however, of tolerating the obsession ("Did I leave the hair dryer on?") by not giving into the compulsion ("Let me just run in and check.")
I don't know of any evidence the OCD is more common in modern cultures.
For me it took evaluating about 100 patients with the syndrome before I felt I had a feel for it. It is one of the few disorders that I think will eventually be traced to specific brain abnormalities. I base this opinion on the ability of certain antipsychotics to induce the syndrome and ongoing neuroscience research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.24972
Are there good studies comparing the prevalence of mental illness in modern times to past times? If so, please send them over...it seems like a hard thing to study, but I'd trust your recommendation if you think some good work has been done on it.
I'll have a look at the article you linked. Thanks for sending that over and sharing your thoughts.
Thank you.Now I don't have to feel guilty about my messy house.
:)
Very thought-provoking, but I’m not entirely convinced! What is your perspective on aggressive compulsive thoughts?
I find it difficult to draw the same connection as with the “symmetry-loving subtype”, which you suggest is linked to dissatisfaction arising from the possibility of satisfaction in modern environments. Aggressive compulsive thoughts, on the other hand, seem more closely tied to cultural phenomena such as morality, rules, and rituals, which have been part of human history for much longer. This suggests to me that they might require a different explanatory framework.
I agree with Randolph Nesse that OCD is probably closer linked to disordered brain processes—for instance, evidence points to abnormalities in the functioning of the basal ganglia, which are responsible for motor control, habit formation, and emotional regulation, among others—than other mental disorders.
As a side note, there might not have been knowledge of germs in earlier times, but there was certainly an awareness of parasites, intoxication, and infection through touching or eating certain things. This makes the phenomenon seem slightly less like a mismatch to our evolutionary context.
Please let me know what you think!
I agree with you that aggressive compulsive thoughts might require a different explanatory framework and that evolutionary mismatch probably explains them little or not at all.
As for disordered brain processes, I take your point, and agree that it's a likely cause, although even that wouldn't necessarily rule evolutionary mismatch out, given that the brain's development depends on the environment, and surely develops differently in modern contexts than ancestral ones. But it's quite possible, of course, that evolutionary mismatch has nothing to do with this at all - that these specific brain abnormalities occur for other reasons.
Btw, if you have any sources on our knowledge of parasites, etc in earlier times, please send it over. I'd be curious to have a look. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.
My relationship with garden hedges and the trimming of in the built environment - I frequently pass 'neatly' trimmed vegetative boundaries which have obviously been executed with deliberate straight lines, but often these straight lines aren't fekin 'level'. They don't tally with the architectural structures that they are juxtaposed with and consequentially a voice in my head screams, Why ? I find such hedges visually offensive and pretty confusing, which manifests in a mild state of physical imbalance. If I allow my frustrations brew, I find myself wanting to confront the perpetrator so that I can school them in my hedge trimming doctrine and cleanse them of what I perceive as being a crime against the urbanscape . Personally, I've frequently used the aid of a large spirit level when trimming a hedge and as completion of the task nears I 'eye through' the lines of my craft against the surrounding structures from different hights and distances until I'm content :) But, interestingly with regards to my perception of the appearance of the 'natural environment' (not interfered with by man) I don't find these in anyway to be difficult to understand or accept, indeed I embrace them as they make me feel calm and centered.
This made me laugh :)
Then again there appear to be a lot of Neolithic dietary influences on the state of mind of people, including anxiety. See, for example, some of the recent references cited in https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/more-likely-knock-on-effects-of-the.
I love the opening quote of that article and certainly think there's something to be said about diet's effect on mental health, but I'm not convinced by many of the studies listed in the article, nor do I think diet necessarily deserves such a central place in the evolutionary mismatch picture. Could be important, sure, but I'd want to see better research on the question. Perhaps I'll have a look at one of the books you mentioned. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Always good to keep an open mind -- otherwise a person is no better than a closet-trained AI server. I think Georgia Ede's book is the best to date, although it gets a bit too touchy-feely for my general taste.
Ok cool, I'll target that one then :)
Absolutely fascinating. And I'd say tentatively, not implausible interpretation for some OCD at least.
Anxiety (hypervigilance etc -- something we sadly evolved to have a tendency towards) has a way of latching onto THINGS THAT ARE HANDY. Satisfaction holes (I've never heard of this before but what a fabulous concept) are perfect because they are always available. You can't fix or reason (looking at you, CBT) your way out of them.
As an aside: I don't have OCD as such but my ptsd-adjacent crazy manifests at times with intrusive thoughts of atrocities and similar (historical typically, like black death, famines, genocides): I can do absolutely nothing about them. Perfect to latch on.
But also. If we accept that principle, then the standard advice of not trying to fix OCD by buying into symptoms (eg not checking heaters and irons) is not quite right. Because some things genuinely provide a fix. And yes, symptoms substitution is a thing so maybe something else will turn up. But still. There was this anecdotal story of a woman obsessing about not switching off her hairdryer. And what solved it fir her was advice to BRING IT WITH HER in the car as she leaves. Whether she started to obsess about something else, the story doesn't tell.
Yep, you nail my main gripe with CBT, its insistence on reasoning/logic. There is often a logic to these things but not in the way that CBT means.
I also take your point that although bringing the hair dryer in the car doesn't solve the underlying problem, it does provide a fix to a common occurrence of the problem, and a lot of times, removing enough common occurrences makes the underlying problem tolerable. This does go against the standard clinical advice, however, of tolerating the obsession ("Did I leave the hair dryer on?") by not giving into the compulsion ("Let me just run in and check.")
Thank you for reading and commenting.